Death row art: a rare glimpse inside Vietnam's secret jails

Nguyen Truong Chinh proudly holds up intricately crafted animals, flowers
and hearts -- secret gifts made from plastic bags by a son on Vietnam's death
row.

The palm-sized creations that his son and other inmates have furtively made
and smuggled out of their solitary cells offer a rare glimpse of prison life in
Vietnam, believed to be one of the world's leading executioners.

They're also an emotional lifeline for desperate parents fighting to free
the children they say have been wrongly convicted.

"Any time we receive the gifts from my son I feel like he's here with me,
like he's come back home," Chinh told AFP, clenching his jaw to hold back
tears.

His 35-year-old son Nguyen Van Chuong, convicted of murdering a police
officer a decade ago, is one of a handful of prisoners known to have made the
artwork that is officially banned on death row.

The families suspect they made the pieces with discarded plastic bags passed
on by fellow prisoners, shredded and woven into figurines.

They were once smuggled out by prisoners released after serving their terms
but relatives stopped receiving them a few years ago, leading Chinh and other
parents to fear guards have cracked down on the forbidden prison pastime.

But the law requires death row inmates to be held in solitary confinement
and monitored around the clock.

Prisoners deemed "dangerous" have one foot shackled for most of the day,
released only for 15 minutes to bathe inside their cell, where they also eat
and use the toilet.

"In many cases, acts of torture, coupled with the denial of medical care,
have resulted in deaths in custody that are almost never investigated by the
authorities," Andrea Giorgetta from International Federation for Human Rights
(FIDH) told AFP.

The MPS report said 36 death row inmates died behind bars between 2011 and
2016, without saying how.

In letters to his family, Chuong said he was tortured in custody: hung
upside down and naked with a dirty sock in his mouth and beaten during
interrogation.

Police electrocuted his genitals and prodded him with needles until he
confessed under duress, he wrote.

Vietnam's foreign ministry rejected allegations of torture as "false
information" in a statement to AFP and said it does not do anything to harm the
"honour and dignity" of inmates.

- Determined to fight -

Relatives of the death row artists say their work offers a necessary
diversion from constant fear of execution.

Prisoners are given little notice before their execution, which since 2010
has been carried out by lethal injection.

Before then, inmates were awakened before dawn, given a final meal and a
cigarette, tied to a post and shot by five officers, with one final "humane
shot" to the head, according to a 2016 report by the Vietnam Committee on Human
Rights.

Today locally manufactured drugs are used to kill prisoners, though
advocates complained of inhumane deaths after a man reportedly took two hours
to die in 2011.

It's an unimaginable end for the families who refuse to give up hope their
sons will one day be freed.

Nguyen Thi Loan has sent more than 1,500 letters to the government
proclaiming the innocence of her son Ho Duy Hai, 32, and gave up her land, home
and job as a vendor to fight for his release.

"I'm determined to seek justice and fairness for Ho Duy Hai until my last
breath," she said of her son who was jailed over the murder of two women in
2008.

His scheduled execution was called off at the 11th hour in 2014 by the
president, raising hopes his case could be reopened.

In his earlier years in prison, Hai sent shrimp, fish and miniature horses
as gifts to his lawyers, former teachers and relatives.

But she hasn't received one in years and fears jailers have banned the
practice.

"Making those gifts didn't harm anyone. Why won't they let my son do it?"
she told AFP in tears.

Supporters hope to raise awareness about Hai's case through his artwork,
which was put on display alongside Chuong's pieces earlier this year at an
underground show by activist artist Thinh Nguyen.

He started collecting the pieces from families years ago after he met them
outside government offices calling for their sons' release.

"When I put these animals on show, their stories are known," Thinh said. "I
look at these and I see a lot of hope."

Nguyen Truong Chinh shares some of the intricately crafted animals made by
his son on death row

The artworks are believed to be made from discarded plastic bags passed on
by fellow prisoners, shredded and woven into figurines

Vietnamese artist Thinh Nguyen with a deer made by an inmate on Vietnam's
death row at his studio in Hanoi

Nguyen Truong Chinh says the art drives his decade-long fight to free his
son, who he says was nowhere near the scene of the crime he was convicted
of

'When I see the animals, I know somehow that my son is stable enough to
create these things, that he is mentally strong,' says Nguyen Truong Chinh